1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to Home Network Telephone systems and, more particularly, to a system and method for using a telephone answering device (TAD) to notify external communication systems of received voice mail messages.
2. Description of the Related Art
Service providers are rolling out multiline, broadband telephony services using, for example, DSL, cable modem, or fixed-wireless broadband access, to carry more than one line of voice data. These carriers desire to deploy telephones that have multiline broadband telephony support in residential, small office home office (SOHO) and small and medium enterprises (SME) environments that subscribe to these broadband telephony services.
In current multiline integrated services digital network (ISDN) or plain old telephone service (POTS) telephones, all of the available external telephone lines terminate at the telephone itself. This allows for easy switching between lines, line selection, indications of line status, control of line-hold, and multiparty conferencing capabilities. The majority of current POTS multiline telephones limit the number of lines supported to two. Typical residential POTS wiring comprise two pairs and can readily support up to two lines, but no more. In current multiline telephones, although all the supported lines terminate at the multiline phone itself, typically only one voice stream is active in a telephone call at any given time, since the multiline phone typically has only one mouthpiece and earpiece.
Home Network telephony systems are emerging that support multiple internally connected home network telephony devices such as telephones, fax machines, and multi-functional peripherals (MFPs). Typically, such Home Network telephone devices share a digital home network transmission media, such as a standard phoneline, an AC powerline, dedicated hardwires (such as Ethernet), or a wireless channel. Telephony adapters exist that allow a legacy analog phone to plug into and use digital home network telephony. Likewise, integrated telephony devices are emerging that directly incorporate the digital home network telephony interface.
However, conventional home network telephony devices and adapters support only one audio path (channel) across the home network. This limitation is highly desirable for low cost service. However, conventional multiline telephony systems require that all the telephone lines that are available at an endpoint, be physically terminated at that endpoint, and support multiple simultaneous audio paths (one per telephone line) to the multiline endpoint.
Several conventional residential and SOHO telephones are able to list the calls that are made (originated), as well as incoming calls that are either answered or missed. In the latter case, this call-log is only useful if calling line ID (CLID) is supported since, without CLID, the call-log cannot identify the number of the caller. Often, call-logs are cross-referenced with phonebook entries, so that the call-log can show a more meaningful ASCII name, herein referred to as a descriptor, to identify the caller, rather than just the number. Likewise, a number in a call-log can typically be saved directly into a phonebook, with the user only needing to type the ASCII name.
It would be advantageous if external communication systems could be notified of the existence of voice mail messages that have been received by a Home Network telephone system.
It would be advantageous if the Home Network telephone system could relay recorded voice mail messages to addresses in an external system.